Dhalsim

Using yoga as a martial arts technique? That's a stretch! Country of Origin: India Fighting Style: Yoga Jada may be excellent at making these Street Fighter toys, but they're no great shakes at actually releasing them. Dhalsim is part of Series 2, alongside Ken Masters, and here he is finally showing up like half a year later than that figure. Meanwhile, some people are already starting to report finding Series 3. Jada, you need a deal with actual stores to carry these for you, not just one or two random locations, and not just online. It took SOTA until the very end of their Street Fighter liecense to release a Dhalsim (and technically in a different line, though you'd have to be a pedant on the level of "The New Batman Adventures isn't BtAS Season 4" to see it that way), so it's exciting that Jada's gotten to him so early. The more Street Fighter games come out, the less of a weird cultural stereotype he's become. Like, originally he didn't have any backstory beyond "uses a peaceful tradition to fight (for some reason)" and "can breathe fire because he eats curry," and then he rode an elephant into his victory screen and we found out he had a son. Over time it's been revealed he entered the tournament to raise money for his village, and then retired from fighting because it went against his pacifist beliefs. Unlike the SOTA Dhalsim, which came out late enough in the line (and in SOTA's life as an existing company) that it only had the bare minimum of accessories, Jada's is as good as all the other characters; he even gets an alternate head! The normal head is just a plain, stoic look, while the second has the mouth open in a shout. Both of them get real metal rings in his earlobes. This is the classic SFII design of the character: tattered shorts held up by a rope belt (sculpted on rather than separate this time), bands around his ankles and wrists, and three skulls on a cord around his neck. Eventually it was declared that those were skulls of children from his village who had died, and he wore them to remind himself of why he was fighting. However, a child's skull is not the same shape as an adult's, which these are. They're also flat on the back so they can rest against his pecs instead of sticking out like the SOTA ones did, but that does nothing to help them look realer. These aren't children's skulls, they're just little skulls he got somewhere. Presumably at the same place Punisher gets his little cartoon skulls. He doesn't look as emaciated as you might expect - this is a Dhalsim who's healthy and fit! Which he'd kind of have to be to travel all over the world and get in street fights. This toy is in Dhalsim's Player 1 colors, which means strong yellow for his clothing and an orange-brown for his skin. I mean, if you want to get technical, all browns are orange, because they're the same color at different brightnesses - just look at the colors in a rainbow, and you'll see that there's no such thing as "brown" light any more than there's "grey" light, and for the same reason; it just so happens that we have a specific name for brown (and grey) when other spots on the spectrum just get to be "dark [whatever color name]." Which makes it ironic, then, that the word "brown" comes from a root meaning bright or shiny, a sense that survives today only in words like "burnish" (presumably referring to the way polished wood looks). Dhalsim's shorts are a bright shade with some paint-washed shadows, and the red tattoos on his scalp and cheeks don't stand out from the skintone very strongly. Both heads have the empty white eyes, which is matched by the skulls he wears. Jada's Dhalsim is smaller than the old SOTA one; remember, SOTA adjusted their scale right at the end, so the last few releases were all oversized. This figure is right in line with the other four Jadas that have been released so far. Also unlike the one from years ago, you can use his joints without worrying that he's going to shatter like spun sugar in your hands! That was some bad construction back in 2009, and frankly I'm surprised that my old figure is still holding up (as well as it ever did - those shoulders are still stuck fast). He has all the joints Jada gives these figures: swivel/hinge ankles, swivel shins, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljoint hips, a balljoint waist, balljointed chest, swivel/hinged wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, balljointed neck, and barbell head, and it all moves safely. Instant upgrade! Dhalsim is iconic in videogame history for his long-range stretchy attacks, so naturally this figure includes alternate limbs. Arms and legs both! They swap on and off the figure with ease, and rather than having any joints of their own, they're bendy, allowing you to twist them however you like. Jada just put Hasbro on notice for the next time they make a Mr. Fantastic figure! Although he has alternate hands - chops or open - they can only be used on the normal arms, not the stretchy ones: those are molded with fists, the same way the stretchy legs are molded with feet that are arched to kick. The figure gets the same clear support stand as the rest of the lineup, but it doesn't really serve much purpose without either A) including the "yoga flame" ball of fire he spits (no longer from eating curry, it's now a psychic projection that does no "real" damage but instead only hurts opponents because they think it's going to), or 2) giving it a little "seat" so we can make the figure look like he's hovering. It was a relief when SOTA released their Dhalsim, getting several major characters out just under the wire, so Jada putting him in Series 2 says they don't want the same to happen to them. But they've really gotta figure out some better distribution if they want their line to make it as deep as SOTA did. -- 01/15/25